Posts Tagged ‘ex-stock’

A combination of customer demand for our ex-stock and customised load cell products and an increase in the number of the market areas served, has resulted in major investment here at our Isle of Wight HQ. Since the start of 2012, our manufacturing and storage facility has increased by 70%, providing an expansion of the testing facilities, as well as an increased area to hold next day delivery load cells and instrumentation. An increase in the workforce over coming months will further strengthen LCM Systems’ expansion plans.

We have seen a steady increase in demand for our customised load cells from a range of different market places, especially our heavy duty shackle load cells for the offshore oil and gas industry. The manufacture and testing of these large sensors require additional space and so we have expanded our facilities by purchasing the next door unit. Consequently, we are now able to handle an increase in orders and the extra space has also meant that we have substantially increased our storage facilities so customers can benefit from a larger range of products available to be dispatched ex-stock.

In my last post I spoke about the importance of managing customers’ expectations and I think that it was key to having such a successful year.

One of my philosophies is ‘always to be honest to customers’. There is no point promising a 3 week delivery, when we know that it is going to take 4 or even 5. All it does is cause problems for everyone. Although our load cells can be a small part of a larger system, they are often “mission critical”. This means that misleading our customers on delivery dates can cause the engineers serious problems. It also means we would spend more time answering calls from irate buyers and customers demanding to know when their load cells were going to be delivered, than we would manufacturing the products that have been ordered.

It is worth bearing in mind, if you go out and get 3 quotes, 2 manufacturers give you a 6 week manufacturing and delivery time and one gives you 4 weeks, the chances are you won’t get it in 4!

That said, of course we will bend over backwards to help accommodate all our customers’ needs and, in fact, that is one of the reasons that we have expanded our factory to enable us to stock our most popular products for same or next day dispatch.

So, don’t be left waiting for your products. When we give a delivery date, we’ll stick to it!

Well, we looked and looked for new premises here on the Isle of Wight but couldn’t find anything suitable for our exciting expansion plans. (I should have added this as one of the disadvantages to my last blog entry.)

However, we didn’t give up, looked at all the options and are now underway with extensive expansion plans to our existing factory so we can provide a comprehensive range of load cells ex-stock. This is a very exciting time for us as we know that many of our customers will benefit from faster, in many cases, next day delivery.

With clever project planning, we have also managed to minimize disruption to our manufacturing facilities. We aim to keep our production promises and most customers will not see any changes in their delivery schedules during the building work. Over here in the UK we are about to embark on our second 4-day weekend, thanks to the Royal wedding, so it will be a busy one for us as we move some our larger pieces of production equipment to their new homes.